RIGHT AND WRONG IN AIDING BLACKS . . .

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

Unfortunately, the breast-beating on both sides in the debate over the NCAA`s proposal to tighten academic requirements for freshmen recipients of athletic scholarships has drowned out real cries for help.

One side whoops about the need to maintain standards that preserve the academic integrity of our great institutions of learning. The other chants about the insensitivity of racist louts who would deprive minority scholars of their one chance at higher education.

Listening to the passionate arguments, you`d think this really was much ado about education. Don`t be misled. This is a semi-private argument among movers and shakers in the megabucks world of college sports.

When the NCAA recently passed Proposal 42, which in 1990 would have made tougher the rules governing freshmen scholarships that are set forth in its Proposition 48, John Thompson of Georgetown and other black coaches cried foul. They said this would be discriminatory, noting that most freshmen in school under Proposition 48 are black. Under 48, they must sit out a year of their athletic scholarships for failing in high school to achieve both a C average and an extremely modest minimum score on at least one of two widely used college entrance exams.

Proposal 42, which now is expected to be killed at next year`s NCAA convention, would have denied scholarships to athletes who did not meet Proposition 48`s standards for freshman eligibility. Thompson and his allies protested that this would deprive some poor blacks of their only chance at an education.

Nobody wants to rob impoverished blacks or other poor minorities of the better lives a college degree could give them. But what`s really

discriminatory is the notion that those most deserving of that opportunity are athletically gifted young men.

As Arthur Ashe, the former black tennis star, and Harry Edwards, the black sports sociologist, both argue, athletes shouldn`t be exempted from having to meet the minimal academic standards set for others. ''I think black educators are underestimating the capabilities of black athletes as students,'' Edwards says.

At most of the better schools, Proposal 42 standards wouldn`t get many students in the door, minority or otherwise, without superior skills in one of the two sports television wants, football and basketball. So it`s hard to argue that its demands are excessive. But even those weren`t propelled to the table by anything more than the Southeastern Conference`s fear that its own similar rules were making it uncompetitive.

Someday big-time college athletics are going to have to come out from behind the looking glass. Then scholarships will go only to those who want an education-not excluding athletes. Those who are there just to play for the packed stadiums and vast television audiences that produce the big money will be paid as professionals to represent the school. That may not be as cost-effective, but it will be more honest.